Register for EPA’s Webinar on Draft Strategy to Better Protect Endangered Species from Insecticides
Released on August 12, 2024
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will hold a public webinar on September 5, 2024, from 1-2 PM ET to provide an overview of its draft Insecticide Strategy. Released on July 25, 2024, the draft strategy furthers the agency’s work to adopt early, practical protections for federally endangered and threatened (listed) species and designated critical habitats from the use of conventional agricultural insecticides.
The draft strategy identifies protections that EPA will consider when it registers a new insecticide or reevaluates an existing one. In developing this draft strategy, EPA identified protections to address potential impacts for more than 850 species listed by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS). The draft strategy identifies protections earlier in the pesticide review process, thus creating a far more efficient approach to evaluate and protect the FWS-listed species that live near these agricultural areas.
The draft insecticide strategy uses the most updated information and processes to determine whether an insecticide will impact a listed species and identify protections to address any impacts. To determine impacts, the draft strategy considers where a species lives, what it needs to reproduce (e.g., food or pollinators), where the pesticide will end up in the environment, and what kind of the pesticide might have if it reaches the species. These refinements greatly reduce the need for pesticide restrictions in situations that do not benefit species.
The webinar will include:
- Discussion of the proposed three-step framework to identify potential population-level impacts to species, identify mitigation measures to address these impacts, and determine the geographic extent of the mitigation measures;
- An overview of case studies to illustrate how the framework could be applied to representative insecticides and how EPA expects to implement the strategy in its registration and registration review actions; and
- An opportunity for the public to ask questions.
The webinar will be open to the public on the GoTo webinar platform, and all interested stakeholders are invited to attend. The agenda and instructions for joining the webinar will be sent to registered attendees.